


NEVER DIE NEVER DIE

by Pemm



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Crossfaction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 01:12:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4459574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pemm/pseuds/Pemm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's gonna come a day when you feel better<br/>You'll rise up free and easy on that day<br/>And float from branch to branch, lighter than the air<br/>When that day is coming, who can say? Who can say?</p><p>—THE MOUNTAIN GOATS, "Up the Wolves."</p><p>An entry for the Flashfire Week event held on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I am young and I am good

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written for the "Flashfire Week" event on tumblr, celebrating the Scout/Pyro ship! As a challenge to myself I set out to write a complete story in seven parts while following the daily prompts for each chapter (which will be listed in the notes preceding each chapter), as well as limiting my musical inspiration for the story (as well as my chapter titles) to tracks by The Mountain Goats. Kudos are in order to PreludeInZ for the initial prompt of a crossfaction story.
> 
> Enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
>  DAY 1: HURT/COMFORT

Scout had a wristwatch. It wasn’t his, because he wasn’t the kind of fancy prick to go around wearing wristwatches when there was a perfectly good sun up there. But he had a wristwatch that wasn’t really a wristwatch, and he’d stolen it from Spy—which had been  _hard_ , by the way, thanks for asking—specifically for trouble like this, because he wasn’t stupid. He’d known, from the minute that Pyro had pulled off his mask to show Scout his face, that he was in real trouble. Real trouble had olive skin and black sideburns and a dorky grin with buck teeth to match his own. Real trouble was missing the ring finger on his left hand and snorted when he laughed, and wasn’t a very good kisser, but damn it all if Scout wouldn’t kiss him anyway.

But mostly, real trouble was on RED team, while Scout was stuck on BLU.

“Hold on, man, jus’ … hell.  _Shit._  Can you even walk?”

For now Scout had cover. Not from the blazing Badlands sun, good luck ever getting that, but from sight of the capture point. Not hard, given they were pretty much on the other side of the field from it. And he had his stolen cloaking watch, but right now he was pretty sure Pyro needed someone who wasn’t invisible to be there, because Pyro was bleeding from about a dozen different places.

Honestly? Scout had no idea how Pyro had wound up here, well past the little flags and fences that marked the limits of respawn, but he  _had_  seen a massive, unholy devil of an explosion a few minutes ago, courtesy Demoman. It was luck he’d seen Pyro as he ran past on his way to the checkpoint. It was sheer, stupid luck that Pyro was still alive.

Pyro wasn’t answering. “Hey,” Scout said, and bit his lip. “You hear me, buddy? Pyro. Darlin‘, c’mon, say somethin’—”

“No,” Pyro ground out. His mask had been ripped in half at some point. Scout could just make out his green eyes, out of focus. “N-no. I can’t feel—I th, think my back’s broken.”

Great. That was great. Scout cussed, spat on the ground, pulled off his hat to run his hand through his hair. Yeah, he looked like his back was broken alright. There was an awful twist right at his waist. It was taking a lot of concentration to focus on what he needed to do. He was used to killing, not saving. “Alright. Shit. Nothin’ for it. Look. Pyro. I’m gonna hafta pull you back over to the field, alright?”

“How—how far.”

“It ain’t much, it’s maybe … maybe twenty feet out. Okay? It’s gonna hurt like a bastard an’ I am sorry about that.”

Pyro swallowed, letting his eyes fall shut. “… Okay. Okay.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll shoot me right after?”

“The minute it’s safe.”

“Okay. Yeah. Do it.”

Pyro’s first pained screech when Scout started scared him enough to freeze. It wasn’t much better when he steeled his resolve and got on with it anyway. This job was the goddamn pits sometimes. Making him drag his dying boyfriend off somewhere just so he could shoot him. Sure, yeah, he’d come back fine, but that didn’t make it any more fun. But he did it, he pulled Pyro clear back onto the field, and after he’d pressed an apologetic kiss to the RED’s forehead he blew Pyro’s brains out.

Scout sighed, nudged the body with his foot, and then sped off to go help cap the point.

 

* * *

 

Three hours passed. It was now one in the afternoon, and Scout had not seen Pyro since he’d shot the guy. He didn’t realize this until Spy commented how he’d been chain-stabbing REDs all day without a single singed thread on his suit to show for it. Even on a bad day, Pyro could always tell when Spy was around.

Scout had a wristwatch.

He made it over to the RED spawn in twenty seconds flat, vanished himself, and ducked into the brick building. The layout was close enough to BLU’s that he managed to navigate it without too much trouble, and ah, yes—there was their spawn.

“—matter and I don’t care, can you fix it or not?”

And there was Pyro. Scout peered around the corner into the bright, white room. The first thing he saw was RED’s Medic, kneeling in a bright red puddle. The next was Pyro, sprawled on the ground, his mask off and his hips still twisted at an impossible angle. “Patience,” the Medic was saying. “I have never seen this before.”

“Patience—screw you, I’ve been spawning with a  _broken back_  for three hours now—”

“Do you suppose yelling at me will heal it?” Medic said, snappish. “Certainly, I can try to fix you again, but the medigun is synced with respawn. It is likely to only make things worse.”

Nothing. For a few seconds Scout thought that sirens had begun to blare in the distance; he realized a few heartbeats later that it was simply his ears ringing. It was shattered a few seconds later by Pyro’s voice. “Sorry. Sorry. I just … can it be fixed? At all?”

Medic sighed. “I will speak to Engineer. I believe backups are taken each night. I promise nothing, but I will speak to him.”

“… Okay. Thanks.”

Scout, at the door, biting on his hand to keep silent, stared numbly at nothing as Medic got up and left.

 

* * *

 

He had to leave. Of course he did, his team would miss him. But he managed to figure out where Pyro’s room was before he did. It wasn’t hard. Just follow the smell of butane.

So they won the round, because RED’s Medic and RED’s Engineer and RED’s Pyro were all out of commission after that. Everyone on BLU laughed about it, and it was rough going for Scout, keeping up the facade. No one on the team could know about him and Pyro. Truth be told, he was more afraid of someone finding out about the enemy-fraternizing thing than he was about the queer thing.

He kept up the act best he could that night, at least until after dinner. Then he found his pilfered watch, stole silently out of the base, and crept across the warzone. They wouldn’t miss him, he’d never managed to hit it off with anyone on his own team anyway. RED’s doors were locked. That was fine. Not for nothing he’d helped his fifth-oldest brother with some heists, way back when.

So he was in. It was weird, being invisible. He didn’t know how Spy managed it all the damn time. He kept tripping over his own feet. Once or twice he thought about killing the cloak and just running for Pyro’s room, but then he turned a corner and found himself face-to-face with the RED Heavy. He killed that idea pretty quick.

Pyro’s room, Pyro’s room … there. It was only ten o’clock, but there was no light beneath the door. Scout glanced around once, twice, and then opened it.

Darkness. The curtains were drawn. Scout held his breath and carefully shut the door behind him. He leaned on it too hard; the click when it closed was audible.

“Who’s that?” It took Scout a moment to ground himself enough to answer. Before he could: “I can’t turn my neck enough to see the goddamn door, answer me.”

“Hey—hey, man, it’s, s’me. Uh. Wait, hang on.” He fumbled with the watch, uncloaking with a quiet hum. “It’s Scout, Py.”

“…Scout? How the hell did you get here?”

“Y’know, I mean, trade secret.”

It was banter, and on another day Pyro would have answered back in kind. This time Scout got no such response, just a shallow sigh. “Well. Hi, I guess.”

“You, uh. How you doin’?”

“My back’s broken. Respawn picked me up how I was when you brought me back and …” Nothing.

Nothing.

Scout shifted his weight, nervous. “I mean … I mean, hey, our Engie, I once asked him, he said they take, uh, they take backups’a our respawn stuff, hey?” Engineer had told him nothing of the sort. “Pro’ly they can fix you like that, yeah?”

“… I don’t know. Maybe. They talked about it a little. Guess I’ll find out in the morning.” Beat. “… You really snuck over here just to check on me?”

“Course I did,” Scout said, and took it as his cue to draw near.

Closer, he could just see Pyro’s outline now: laid out flat on his back on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Pyro had trouble getting to sleep on a good night, tossing and turning, or so he’d told Scout. They’d never actually had the chance to spend the night together. Not, Scout realized abruptly, until now. He sat down on the edge of the mattress. “… ’m sorry,” Scout said at last, and this was what made Pyro’s face screw up in emotion.

“Yeah. Me too. C, c’mere, would you. C’mon. Can’t hurt me any worse, I guess.” A long, shaky breath. “ _Shit,_  Scout.”

“Hey, hey, shh.”

Pyro’s bed wasn’t much different from Scout’s own at his base; maybe a little softer. Not bigger, certainly. He arranged himself as carefully as he could at Pyro’s side, curled into him, and a few moments later felt fingers sinking into his hair.

Silence, then. Scout knew when to shut his mouth, thanks. Silence and the sound of one another’s breathing, interrupted periodically by a raw sniffling sort of sound that was hell to listen to. And finally: “Scout, what if they can’t do anything?”

“Aw—aw, man, Py, c’mon, don’t talk that way.”

“But what if they  _can’t_?” Pyro was like a dog with a bone about things, sometimes. “What if I’m—stuck like this. I’ll be stuck in a chair for the rest of my life. Oh my God. What about my horse? Nobody else can get near her, they’ll shoot her—”

“Sweetheart,” Scout said, leaning in as close as he dared, touching Pyro’s cheek, “These is people that bring us back from the  _dead_  every day. There ain’t no way they can’t fix you.”

“I just … ”

“I know y’just, except it’s that your ‘just’ is always some bullshit worst-case scenario. Every time.” No answer. “… Py, please. Really. I … aw, hell, no, don’t cry. I’m sorry, don’t cry.”

It wasn’t a bad cry, just a few stray tears. Scout wiped them away with one hand before he thought better of it and started kissing them away instead. This, at last, seemed to help. The tears faded, the worries dimmed. For now it was simply two boys, fearful and alone together, trying to find a way back to the light.

And eventually Scout settled in beside Pyro, as comfortable as they could manage with the two of them, and slept.


	2. whole boxes of memories wrapped up at the curb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DAY 2: ALTERNATE UNIVERSE

It was 4:38 in the morning and by now Pyro had mostly settled into a kind of numbness. Mostly. The drugs Medic had given him were starting to wear off, and he could feel the snarling ache starting to build in the small of his back again. He couldn’t feel his legs, still.

And he really had to piss. God damn it.

Next to him lay Scout. His Scout—well, BLU’s Scout. Pyro didn’t have much of an opinion about RED’s Scout, she was sort of a jerk. But his Scout, anyway. This wasn’t really how he’d wanted their first night together to go.

“Pyro?”

Crap. “Yeah?”

“So y’are awake.” He shifted next to him, pushing himself up on his elbows. In the pre-dawn light Pyro couldn’t make out any of his face; mostly he could smell him, and he smelled like he’d run through dirt and dust and blood all day and forgotten to shower. Probably this was what had happened. Pyro didn’t really mind. “Didja sleep at all?”

“Nope.”

“Aw, Py…”

Pyro wrinkled up his nose. “I don’t sleep much anyway, it’s fine.”

“Well… you feel okay?”

Pyro sighed, turning the question over in his mind. No easy answer came to him. “Look … you should probably go. We can’t get caught together.”

He could feel Scout studying him, and wished he was able to roll away. “Probably,” he agreed eventually, and Pyro felt fingers gently rubbing his scalp. “Hey. What’ll we do after we quit this job?”

“What?”

“Y’know, where should we oughta go? We’re rich, man, we could go anywhere, we been together a year an’ we ain’t never talked about the after.”

“I don’t think we can even quit while we’re alive, wasn’t that on the contract? Don’t the teams have to be dissolved entirely?”

Scout made a low, frustrated sound somewhere in his throat. “I am tryin’ to distract you, man. This job, kinda it’s trash sometimes. Like, kinda right now. An’ this cross-team shit, I mean—it’s scary, y’know, everyone knows ‘bout Solly an’ Demoman, an’ they was just  _friends._ ”

Pyro was quiet again, and Scout dropped back down to the mattress. The birds were waking up, and he could hear them through the window. “I want to go to Hawaii,” Pyro said eventually. “That’s where my granddad’s from.”

“Really? I thought you was Chinese or somethin’.”

“Well, mostly I am, but my granddad’s not.”

“Okay,” Scout said, “okay, that’s cool, but like, think bigger.  _Anything._  What if we could be, like, kings’a Hawaii. Do they got kings in Hawaii? I bet they do.”

“We wouldn’t be kings of anything, we’d be outlaws.”

“Train robbers!”

“There’s not any trains on Hawaii. ... I think.”

“You are no freakin’ fun, talk with me ‘bout bein’ train robbers. In, I dunno, maybe in Oregon? I guess trains is all over, it don’t matter where we’d go.”

“How do you rob a train anyway? I think I saw some guys in a movie do it on horses once.”

“Yeah! Aw man, that’d be perfect for you, you an’ Esther could outrun any stupid train.”

Pyro snorted. “You’ve never even seen Esther run.”

“Yeah, well, a guy doesn’t win a buncha races on a slow horse, huh? I  _have_  seen all your damn trophies. You’d hafta teach me how to ride, though, I ain’t got any clue how to ride no horses.”

“What would we steal? We don’t need money.”

“Oh yeah,” Scout said, the frown apparent in his voice. “We’d steal … shoot. We’d bust into them luxury cars an’ eat the food, that’s what we’d do.”

“And the fancy alcohol.”

“Yeah! No more stinkin’ Red Shed! Damn, for rich guys we drink godawful beer, Py.”

They carried on like that for at least another hour, or the sun was starting to come up, anyway. After the gravel wars, they decided, they would first be train robbers, and then sailors, and then cannibals. (“Not  _really_  cannibals, though.” “’Course not, that’s gross, just we’d say we was. Make everyone else real scared’a us.”) Scout had just been outlining his thoughts on how one day they’d retire to a spooky old house somewhere in Louisiana when they got old when it happened: a knock on the door.

Pyro froze. Scout clapped a hand over his mouth. The door said, in a voice that sounded a lot like Engineer’s, “Pyro? You up?”

“ _Hide_ ,” Pyro hissed, but he needn’t have. Scout had already disappeared; Pyro saw the closet door of his room swing open and then clap itself shut, just as Engineer opened the door. “Engie. Uh, morning.”

“You too,” Engineer said absently. His hardhat was gone, and his goggles were pushed up onto his forehead. Shadows lurked beneath his eyes. “You hanging in there?” Pyro shrugged. “Well, sure you are.”

“Did you look at the respawn backups?”

“Sure did. Ah.” Engineer hesitated. “Well. It ain’t  _bad_  news, exactly. We’re pretty sure we can fix you up with the old data. You’ll lose some memories, though. Everythin’ between the backup an’ whenever we do it.”

Pyro noticed his hand had balled into a fist, nails digging into his palm. “What’s ‘exactly’ mean?”

“So, here’s the thing … that backup system’s a mess. Everythin’s there, but findin’ one in particular and makin’ certain whose it is happens to be another thing entirely.”

“So?”

Engineer shifted uncomfortably. “The only backup we could be sure was yours is from about a year ago. We can use it, but it’ll be like everythin’ from the last year never happened.”

“…Oh,” Pyro said, and looked at the closet.


	3. and we try to keep our spirits high

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DAY 3: FIRST KISS

Engineer had just … said that, dropped that bomb on Pyro, and then left. Okay, Pyro had asked him to leave, to let him think. Still.

Scout scrambled out of the closet the minute it was safe. Pyro was exactly where he’d been all night, because of course he was, and he was staring at the ceiling. “I toldja! I toldja they can fix you up.”

“No they can’t. Not unless I want to forget everything that happened this year.”

“Well … I mean, yeah, but—”

“I’d forget about my brother’s wedding,” Pyro mumbled. “And all the breakthroughs I had with Esther. And  _you,_  I don’t want to do that to you. I wouldn’t have ever even done them as far as I’m concerned. I don’t—I can’t do that.”

Scout’s grin had faded. “Well … but your back, though. You can’t not be able t’walk. Um—I guess … I mean, can’t your medic do nothin’ regularly? He’s a freakin’ doctor.”

“He said it would take months. They’d kick me off the team.”

“What if you … I dunno, there’s, I mean what if you recorded y’self tellin’ y’self what happened? It’s not … I mean it ain’t the same, I guess. It’d be real hard to believe too, huh.”

Pyro took a deep breath and sighed it out, long and faint. “You … you should go.”

“Pyro—”

“ _Leave._ ”

It occurred to Scout that for as much as he knew about Pyro, he didn’t really know what he was like when he was angry. He was seeing it now, he thought, with the growing sunlight pooling over his face, gone blotchy and flushed and fiercely avoiding eye contact. “I, uh,” Scout said, “yeah, okay, okay. Alright. M’sorry. Um. If you … I mean, if you decide to do it, just. I get it.”

Pyro squeezed his eyes shut and didn’t answer, and Scout stole away, red in the face.

 

* * *

 

“Hey! Hey, uh, Medic? Doc?”

Scout stuck his head into the infirmary, brightly lit and clean, and wondered if the stuff Pyro had told him about RED’s medic’s place being gross and creepy was true. BLU’s Medic—well, he maybe wasn’t the most comforting guy out there, but Scout thought he was okay.

He wasn’t in the room, though. Scout ambled in, fiddling with the stolen watch in his pocket and biting his lip.

Medic was okay, but he was having abrupt second thoughts.

Footsteps behind him made him jump. Turning, he found the man himself there, squinting at him with a keen stare. “Hello there,” Medic began, strolling in. “I hope you are not here to ‘borrow’ my doves again.”

“Hey, that was  _good_  prank, I saw you laughin’ when they came bustin’ out into Spy’s face. An’ I got em all back just fine, yeah?”

A smirk pulled at Medic’s mouth. “I suppose you did. Well, what is it? I never see you unless you want something.”

Scout winced. “I, uh, well—you’re, you’re real sharp, yeah. I had uh, I had a question, I guess, if you got a minute.”  _Hey Medic, can I talk you into fixin my boyfriend’s broke back, oh and by the way I’m gay, which I think maybe you at least ain’t gonna care about on account’a you and Heavy, but also my boyfriend sorta is on the other team and he’s gonna forget all about me and I might never see him again if I don’t do something?_  Okay, more like question _s_.

More like ten questions and a desperate hope that Medic wouldn’t instantly turn him in to that spooky lady from the mini-TV’s.

Medic just snorted. “If you are going to ask me to replace your blood with that terrifying soda you drink again, the answer is no.”

“What? Oh. Oh, haha, yeah, no, I mean, that was a joke anyway. Heh, real funny, right? Yeah. I don’t—”

He shut up as Medic rounded on him, a dove suddenly perched on his bent arm, and peered down at him with those eyes again. “You do not usually beat around the bush,” Medic said. “I take it this is something more serious.”

“Well—”

“Is it a girl? I do not do prenatal, I cannot help you if you’ve impregnated some poor girl.”

“There ain’t no girl! I just—I mean I was, I was wonderin’ about, uh, you an’ Heavy. About you bein’ a thing. ’Cause you’re a thing, right?”

This, at last, silenced Medic, who raised one eyebrow for a moment before he turned and set the dove down on the table. Then he began to pull off his gloves. “Yes, if that’s how you want to put it. A ‘thing.’ Shut the door, please.”

Scout shut the door, and if it had had a lock he would have turned that, too. When he turned back to Medic he had shrugged out of his white coat. It lay draped on a gurney, and now he was holding his pince-nez in one hand and rubbing at his eyes with the other. “Alright,” he said as Scout trotted back over to him. “Go on. Ask.”

“I—”

“And I would caution you to choose your questions mindfully.”

Shit. Now Scout didn’t have any idea what to say. He shifted his weight. “Well, uh. I just was wantin’ to know if you two was still, y’know. A thing. I don’t think nobody else on the team is anythin’ like, or at least I dunno if they is an’ I don’t wanna get my nose broke askin‘, an’ I don’t know nobody back home that is, except, like, this one guy, but the last time I said anythin’ to him about it he near about broke my nose an’ so I punched him in the mouth and then there was a fight and—just, I don’t know nobody.” He took a deep breath and realized he’d pulled off his hat, twisting it in his hands. “And, but I mean the thing is mainly that there’s been this guy that I been, y’know, seein‘, kinda, uh, for like a year now, but he got—he got hurt real bad an’ he don’t got a lot of options so I—here I am talkin’ to you.”

Medic blinked at him, once, slowly. Then he glanced away, leaning, Scout thought, more heavily than before against the wall. “Here you are,” he echoed, a long time later, long enough that Scout had begun to sweat. “I see. I hope you did nothing so foolish as to tell someone outside of the team about the medigun.” Well, technically he hadn’t. “Good, there is a bit of sense in that brain of yours. Tell me the problem.”

“Y’mean you’ll help?”

“I will do what is within my power.”

 

* * *

 

So he talked to Medic. That, in his opinion, was the hardest part of the whole idea, so breaking into Engineer’s workshop right after that was easy. (The niggling thought came to him that he was having an awfully easy time with the whole Act Like Spy thing, and what if there was something to all the jokes everyone made, but he quickly shoved it aside.)  _Stealing_  the teleporters was easy; setting them up, well out of sight of either base? Not quite as easy. It took him three hours, but he got it in the end. It was such a relief when he finally managed to get from Pad A to Pad B that he fell on his ass in his excitement.

His giddiness was sobered once he snuck back into RED territory. It was different from yesterday, he kept having to navigate around Pyro’s team members. The RED scout unwittingly came within six inches of clocking him with her bat when she started swinging it in the hall. Crazy broads.

Pyro’s room, there it was. Scout slunk in, heaved a sigh of relief when he saw Pyro was still there, and killed the watch.

Pyro—well, didn’t jump. He flinched, though. “Shit! Geez, Scout, don’t do that!”

“Sorry,” Scout said, finally putting down the heavy teleporter pad. “Okay but look, listen, dude, I got—well I dunno yet but it’s maybe somethin‘.“ He could see Pyro craning his neck to get a look at what he’d dropped. ”I talked to my Medic, right, he’s a good guy, real good, an’ I told him you was hurt and he said he’d see if he could do anythin’ for ya!”

Ah. Now Pyro was looking at him like he was crazy. Maybe he was, a bit. “Are you insane?!” Ahh. “You told your medic about us? We might as well kill ourselves now!”

“No, I told him about my boyfriend an’ his busted back, or didja forget nobody else on my team’s got a clue what’s in that suit an’ mask that’s burnin’ ’em up all the time?” Scout glanced around Pyro’s mess of a room, picked up the teleporter, and headed for the closet with it. “I didn’t tell him about Pyro, I told him about Calvin.”

Pyro groaned, putting his hands over his eyes. “You told him my  _name?_  You are going to get us killed. This is a terrible idea, we are going to get found out and—I don’t know, get murdered.  _Skinned._ ”

Scout stuck his head out of the closet, where the teleporter was just starting to whirr. “I don’t hear you sayin’ no.”

At this Pyro was silent. Scout picked his way through the dirty clothes and things, back to the bed. “Hey,” he said, gingerly peeling one of Pyro’s hands back from his face. “I just thought it’d be worth tryin’. He is a real good doctor, promise, but … if you wanna call it off it’s up t’you.”

Pyro blinked. The eye Scout could see was terribly red. “Do you remember our first kiss?”

“Wh … well, sure, yeah. Under the bridge.”

Swallowing, Pyro shut his eyes, rubbing at them. It took him a while to go on. “I just—I can’t stop thinking about that. I remember it so clearly, it was such a weird night. All the stars were out.”

“And then that coyote came outta nowhere.”

Pyro tried to grin, almost made it. “Right down on the poor rabbit we were watching. And you got a nosebleed trying to chase it down. Why’d you do that? The rabbit had to already be dead by then.”

“I hadta try. I like rabbits.”

The grin, what little of it was there, faded. “Yeah. I won’t remember that if I let them respawn me.”

“I swear it’ll be alright, doin’ this. Just you gotta trust me.”

There was a long silence, at some point in which Pyro reached out for Scout’s hand, entwining their fingers. And then: “Okay,” Pyro said, grim. “Okay. If you’re sure.”

“I’m always sure.”


	4. I held onto you with a desperate strength

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DAY 4: ACTIVITIES

To Pyro’s credit, he did a remarkable job of staying quiet when Scout clumsily picked him up and carried him over to the teleporter. The painkillers his team’s medic had dosed him up weren’t much help, but he managed to keep it down to just cursing wildly under his breath.

Into the closet, and then the familiar sickly rushing sensation that accompanied teleportation. When Pyro opened his eyes again he found that they were in one of the barns nearly out of respawn, on RED’s territory. He took a moment to be grateful he’d already gotten the pain of getting out of his asbestos suit over while Scout had been away.

Things seemed to go in a bit of a blur after that. It probably didn’t help that between his lack of sleep and lack of appetite he was already feeling light-headed, and then there was the whole “agonizing pain” thing. Scout kept babbling at him, like he did, and Pyro just nodded or mumbled something as seemed appropriate.

And then someone else was there, in a flash of white. Pyro winced and turned his face aside with a groan. “I imagine this is him,” the white thing said.

“I mean yeah, obviously that’s Cal, he—”

“I will do you the favor of not asking why you are keeping him in a barn,” BLU’s Medic said, kneeling down at Pyro’s side. “I will need him on his stomach to examine him properly. Help me move him. What happened?”

Hands under him, shifting him. Pyro grit his teeth against the pain, listening as Scout rattled off a fake-but-surprisingly-believable story about how Pyro had been thrown off a horse. From his stomach he couldn’t see a damn thing. “Fine, that is enough,” Medic said as Scout was launching into some particularly imaginative details to explain the still-fresh wounds Pyro had left on the rest of him. “You are fortunate it was not very much higher or you should have been totally disabled.”

“Yeah, real lucky,” Pyro mumbled.

“You are, actually,” Medic said. “There are a few things I can try. Scout?”

“Yo hey what’s up?”

“Leave, please. For something like this I require the ability to concentrate.”

“Oh. Oh, uh, okay. I’ll go … I’ll go keep watch, yeah.”

Footsteps, and the creak of a barn door. Medic waited a few moments before exhaling. “You did not sustain this injury from falling off a horse.”

Pyro stared fixedly at the ground. “Maybe I did.”

“Not unless the horse exploded into shrapnel immediately afterward,” Medic said, droll. “But! Never mind. I do not pry unless it is relevant to the treatment. Perhaps, though, you could tell Scout I don’t appreciate being lied to, even if it is for a nobler cause.”

Pyro felt his temper flare. “Scout’s not a liar.”

At this, Medic only chuckled. “Well,” he said, “who am I to sully him for you?” And then, a moment later: “He is very brave to risk bringing you to me.”

“Um,” Pyro said. Play the part, play the part—“why’s that? Because of … us?”

“There is that. He was a bit of a wreck when he broached the subject with me. But I think you know what I mean.”

“I … no, I don’t—”

“I just said I don’t appreciate being lied to, Herr Pyro.”

Something cold and biting snapped through Pyro, and, haltingly, he twisted his neck enough to look back up at the man over him. Medic was not looking at him, instead fussing with something in his coat pocket. How the hell had he figured them out? “… Oh,” he said at last, his voice as lame as his legs. “That. Yeah.” Nothing. “Are … are you gonna turn us in?”

To his surprise Medic rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a fool. And incriminate myself in the process? If nothing else I would be under severe review for using secret, experimental technology on an outside party.” When a long few seconds dragged by in silence, he added—a bit more gently—“It is a terrible thing to be afraid to look for help because of the consequences. I will keep your secret.”

It was all a bit much for Pyro at once. He was still trying to formulate an answer when Medic carried on. “Now! Now I will fix your back.”

“I—really? How?”

“It is a secret, I have said this. I am going to put you under, and when you wake you will be able to walk again, for I am an utter genius. Are you ready?”

 

* * *

 

Over an hour passed, and during it Scout bit most of his nails down until they bled. When Medic finally called him back in, somber-toned, he braced himself for the worst.

He was not expecting to see Pyro on his feet, all smiles, flushed in the face. “You––ohmigod y’did it! He did it? Right? This ain’t, I ain’t hallucinatin’ or—”

Medic gave him a cool, pleased smile, and suddenly Pyro was there, his arms thrown around Scout’s neck, kissing him. The impact smacked him back against the barn wall, and it hurt more than a little bit, but he hardly noticed. When they finally broke apart it was for Scout to bury his face in Pyro’s hair. “I, Jesus, Cal, I was so—Medic,” he said abruptly, remembering. “Medic, man, thank you. I dunno how—I mean if I can do anythin‘, for you doin’ this an’ all—”

“Do?” Medic said, lifting an eyebrow. “Do what? I can’t imagine what you’re on about.”

“Seriously, doc—”

“Mm. You may thank me by being more careful of yourselves in the future, then,” he said. “The next time you may not find help.”

Scout just nodded, still dizzy with adrenaline, still giddy with Pyro’s weight against him. Medic looked them over for a few seconds longer, nodded, and then left.

“Wow,” Scout said, just under his breath, and then he wasn’t saying anything because he had started kissing Pyro again.

 

* * *

 

It was a bit touch-and-go after that, sorting out how everything would be explained to the rest of Pyro’s team. They left the respawn perimeter and entered it again, and with a deep breath Pyro shot himself. A few tense minutes later, Scout, crouched invisibly across from the RED spawn, breathed a huge sigh of relief when Pyro popped back into existence standing up.

He passed it off as a lucky fluke from a desperate last-chance suicide, and that was that.

A month passed, slowly. Scout kept the stolen watch, and Pyro swiped one of his own. Their meetings went from once or twice every month to nearly every week. It was funny, sort of, how much surer about things Scout felt now. And he had finally made a friend on his own team, sort of; Medic gave him what could be interpreted as a friendly nod, now and then.

Tonight it was a cloudy, cool night after a particularly rough week of fighting, and night-hiking maybe wasn’t the safest way to spend their time together, but at least it meant they weren’t likely to be found. And anyway, Scout liked impressing Pyro with what stray knowledge he could remember from being a cub scout. Or trying. Pyro mostly knew most of the stuff Scout tried to tell him.

But they were out and they were together and no one was going to find them, and that was what mattered. Scout didn’t much care what they did as long as that happened.

And it was that night when, after an hour of idle talk and idle wandering left them curled up at the base of a gnarled, ancient tree, when Scout said: “What if we just … didn’t go back?”

“What?”

Scout shifted, trying to get more comfortable; Pyro was a jockey and that meant he was thin as a rail. Using his lap for a pillow always ended up more uncomfortable than he would have liked. “Like, what if we just caught a Greyhound out somewhere, y’know? Just forget the whole thing. Go rob those trains.”

In the faint light he could just make out the lopsided smile on Pyro’s face. “I’m pretty sure that’s breaking every contract we signed.”

“Aw, forget that. We could go disappear, hide out for a year or two. Jus’ you an’ me. I’m sick of this crap, this, all this  _hidin’_  … s’bad enough we gotta be careful normally but this stuff with the different teams? S’garbage, man, I hate this.”

“Me too,” Pyro said. “I dunno. I mean, it’s like, the longer I’m here the more scared I get of trying to leave. RED’s got their fingers everywhere. I bet BLU does too. It feels like knowing too much, sometimes I wish I’d never signed up.”

“Yeah, except for me, right?”

“Yeah.”


	5. when we were young and green

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DAY 5: SMUT

As it happened it was only two days later that opportunity arose. Well, one kind of opportunity. Not opportunity to quit the teams, that would be too good to be true. But the entire BLU team had apparently been planning a trip to Santa Fe that weekend. Scout had heard about it, he just didn’t really care.

What he did care about was the opportunity to have the entire base all to himself.

Of course he snuck Pyro over, as soon as he was certain the BLU base was deserted. And it was just  _fun_ , having the day together. They watched staticky films on the tiny gray television and made pancakes and discussed what flavor of ice cream was superior to all others (Scout, mint chocolate-chip; Pyro held it was rocky road). And it was just about three in the afternoon when they found themselves on Scout’s bed—somewhere he’d been thinking about all day, but carefully avoided bringing up.

Except now Pyro had straddled his lap and was sitting there kissing him. It took both of them a while to realize they could take their time, and that was when things became much more enjoyable. Scout was a bit hyper-aware of exactly how much more, his face flushing red when Pyro shifted in his lap in a way that felt particularly good to a particular part of his anatomy.

Pyro leaned back, grinning. Shifted again in the exact same way. At least he was red, too. “Happy to see me?”

“Mm. Better believe it. Wait, lemme, lemme take off …” He shrugged out of his shirt, looked down at the collection of scars and bronze skin he’d accumulated there. Pyro reached out, lightly dragging his fingertips down Scout’s sides. He stopped when they reached his hips. “Hey, uh,” Scout said, “do you wanna, y’know …”

Pyro lifted his eyebrows, waiting for Scout to finish his sentence. When the rest never came he finished it for him. “Fuck like rabbits?”

“Yeah, that.”

“Why the hell else am I here?”

Scout grinned.

Pyro clambered off of him and seconds later they had both shucked off what they still had on without further preamble. Or most of it. Scout only managed to get one sock pulled off and thrown across the room before Pyro had turned on him, and Scout went still.

Pyro. Pyro turned out to be, under the chemsuit and the baggy clothes he wore off-field, soft curves and lovely skin. Burns chewed up one of his legs, and a patch on his ribs Scout had never been in a position to notice before. Dark hair trailed from his stomach down to his dick, which he had one hand on. Scout had to drag his eyes away to look up when Pyro said, “Like what you see?”

“Uh,  _yeah_ , ’cept probably I think I oughta get a better look, c’mere.”

Pyro practically jumped on him. It was an electric thrill that shot straight through Scout’s spine down to his cock, only getting hotter as they play-wrestled and rolled all over the bed. And it  _was_  thrilling; they didn’t have to be quiet, they didn’t have to check over their shoulders. They could just  _be_. And at last after their laughing and wrestling began to subside, Pyro broke off from a particularly deep kiss to say, “How do you wanna do this?”

“I dunno. You ever done this before?”

“Once. Well. Sort of. Almost. Almost once.” Scout lifted one eyebrow; Pyro shrugged. They’d wound up on their sides. “He changed his mind at the last minute.”

“Damn, how come?”

Pyro made a face. “I dunno. Chickened out or something. He wasn’t even the one that was gonna get fucked.”

“You want me on top?”

“I think so. Yeah.” He exhaled as Scout rolled over to dig through his nightstand. “Have  _you_  ever done this before?”

“’Course I have, I’m like a sex god. Best in show. Not, like, a ton, I mean. A couple times, just with this one guy.”

“Sex god.”

“You heard me.”

Pyro rolled his eyes dramatically as Scout came back; Scout stuck his tongue out at him. Then they were kissing again, and fumbling with the makeshift lube Scout had stolen days ago. Pyro moaned maybe a little too theatrically when Scout went down on him, but the surprised gasp that followed when Scout pressed greased fingers against him more than made up for it. “Fuck!”

“Gettin’ there.”

“Shut up and put your mouth back, oh my God.” Snickering, Scout obeyed.

It seemed like it lasted for a long time, and Scout was curious to find he was content with that; moreover how much he enjoyed the long minutes, and the way Pyro tried to get a handhold on his too-short hair. He liked how Pyro arched his back and the increasing heaviness of his breathing, he liked the little startled half-yelps whenever he went deeper with his finger or added another one. That last one was  _nice_.

But eventually his jaw got sore, and he got to the point where more lube seemed redundant, and that was when he finally pulled away, sucking at his lips. Pyro lay prone, still taking those deep breaths, staring up at the ceiling. “Front or back?” Scout asked.

“Huh?” Pyro said. “Oh, umm. Back. Yeah. Hang on.”

It took him a decided effort to roll over, and more to get to his hands and knees. It was in that short amount of time that Scout felt his heart rate really start to jump, shit, he was nervous, he never got nervous about this kind of thing. Aw, geez.

But then Pyro said, “Okay,” and then Scout was moving forward, putting his hands on Pyro’s hips; rubbing his thumbs in hard circles for a few seconds over Pyro’s ass before reaching down to line himself up. “Okay,” he echoed, and pushed forward.

Slowly, slowly. He’d done a decent prep job, at least, meeting little resistance. Pyro made a  _sound_ , something he couldn’t place but only added fuel to the fire. Scout realized he was panting slightly. “This—this okay?”

“Yeah. Oh, fucking hell. Yes. Keep going.”

So he did, until he couldn’t, and then he pulled away. It went from careful and measured movements to a steady rhythm, and from his angle Scout could see the way Pyro was knotting his hands in the blankets or his own hair, got to see him tensing, relaxing for an instant, tensing again with every thrust. “Beautiful,” Scout muttered, sliding his hands up Pyro’s back.

Harder, faster, Scout hadn’t been lying when he’d said he’d done this before but it sure hadn’t been like this. It wasn’t long at all before he grit his teeth, sinking in until their skin was flush, and heard Pyro mumble  _fuck_  as he came. He pulled out before he was entirely finished, cum hitting the sheets, and it took him a few dazed seconds to remember to attend to Pyro. He had rolled over onto his back, jerking himself off with his eyes screwed up, and Scout reached down to help him finish off. That took a little longer, but when it did, aw, hell. Sitting on his knees, Scout surveyed the scene in front of him—Pyro sprawled bonelessly, gulping down air with cum on his stomach—and found a weary grin. “That is a good fuckin’ look for you.”

Pyro blinked at him once before snorting. “I bet it is. Shut up and come down here.”

“I already did, though.”

“Oh my  _God._ ”


	6. let me down, let me down, let me down gently

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DAY SIX: CUDDLES

Another day, another death. Pyro woke up in respawn with a mouthful of teeth, extras that the spawning thing apparently had made too many of this time and didn’t know what else to do with. It was a harmless side-effect, mostly, but mother of  _God_  it was a disturbing one. It was the third time this week it had done that to him and he was getting tired of it. He was getting tired of the whole job, honestly, the dying thing and all. And maybe it didn’t help that these days it felt like he was more desperate to be with Scout than ever.

He spat the teeth out into the bucket hanging on the wall specifically for those weird respawn bonuses—today it had an entire ear and part of a tongue in it—and stalked back onto the battlefield.

Maybe he was just young and dumb and in love for the first time, like genuinely in love, but … damn, how often was that going to happen, anyway? Just the other day he’d heard Engineer talking about how long it had been since he’d so much as been on a date.

It wound up just a constant, dull sort of ache, missing Scout. Sometimes it was worse even when he was with Scout, because he knew he would have to leave him soon. He said as much one evening, a night where they’d holed up in the loft of one of the empty barns to be alone together. In the dark he heard Scout sort of laugh, shifting a little in Pyro’s arms. “Yeah,” he said, and Pyro felt a hand squeeze his shoulder. “Yeah, I know whatcha mean. I’m gettin’ sick of it too. I mean, maybe if we was on the same team …”

“What if we … brainwashed your pyro and I switched places with him?”

Scout snorted. “Hey, there’s an idea, nice. Problem solved. Jus’ gotta also brainwash everyone else knows what the two’a you look like.”

“You could … fake your death. Genius.”

“Heh. Man. Y’know, I asked Demo ‘bout quittin’ the other day. Like if we’re allowed to quit. Guy looked at me like I was nuts, told me I maybe oughta reread the contract an’ maybe not let nobody else hear me talkin’ like that.”

Pyro grimaced. “I hate this.”

“I know, man. C’mere.”

Scout twisted a little, so he was the one holding Pyro instead of the other way around, and Pyro sighed heavily as he pressed his face against Scout’s neck. He smelled like sweat and dust and, faintly, of that godawful soda that was so over-caffeinated it practically made him vibrate. It was a weird, almost medicinal kind of scent that put Pyro in the mind of cough syrup, and he supposed he would have hated it if not for the fact that he associated it so strongly with Scout. As it was, though, he just curled up closer against him, let Scout hook one leg between his own, and for a little bit pretended he could have this every night.

It wasn’t an evening for talk. They listened to the crickets and the night-birds and the coyotes, and once, the far-off scream of a cougar.

And then, finally, Scout groaned. “I better oughta go.”

“Five more minutes?”

“Y’said that five minutes ago, babe.”

Maybe so, but it didn’t stop Pyro from stubbornly tangling his hand in Scout’s shirt and not letting go. Scout tried half-heartedly to free himself for maybe ten seconds before giving up. “I really gotta leave, Cal.”

“Nnn.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too,” Pyro said, sensing defeat. He let his hand drop.

Scout pushed himself up to a sitting position, stretching. His back was to the loft window, and Pyro was treated to the sight of his silhouette: lean, muscled, lovely. He took it in while it lasted. Then: “Did you mean what you said in the woods a couple weeks ago?”

“Huh?”

“About … leaving. Just leaving and not coming back. Get on a Greyhound. Rob trains.”

“Well … I dunno. I dunno if I did.” Hesitation. “We would be in real fuckin’ hot water if we did that. We might never get to  _stop_  runnin’.”

“I’d do it,” Pyro said quietly. “For you? I’d do it.”

“Cal …”

Silence overtook them. At some point Scout reached out and smoothed some of Pyro’s hair back. “Love you,” he repeated, just before getting to his feet. “See you later.”

And then he was gone.


	7. AND BY DAYBREAK WE’LL BE GONE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DAY 7: FREESTYLE

It was a bright, cool day, one of those delicious early autumn days, and if Scout had known it was the last day he would ever respawn, he might not have noticed. But as it was he did notice, early in the morning when he was lacing his cleats and stretching out to run. The sun was cresting the far-off cliffs and dew clung to what little plant life had managed to survive eighteen people blowing each other up and gunning each other down, and the clouds overhead were wispy and dreamlike.

It was going to be a good day, he decided.

Off he went, bolting through the dirt and rocks like a greyhound. By now he knew the path by heart and followed it effortlessly, kicking up dust on his heels, getting his pants wet running through the damp tall weeds. He disappeared into a tiny grove of trees too scrappy to die in the Badlands’ heat, and when he broke through again the sun seemed to have leapt higher into the sky. He loped wide around the spot he’d found Pyro with his spine snapped—it seemed like ages ago now—jumped a ditch because he could, and trotted back into the base, panting.

It had been a good run, and it would be a good day. And now he’d go and get a damn good breakfast. He pulled off his sweat-soaked shirt, threw it over his shoulder and made for the mess.

He was not expecting, when he rounded the corner, to see Miss Pauling. She was speaking to Engineer as Scout paused in the doorway, and stopped when she saw him. “Oh hey,” Scout started up, “heya Miss Pauling, wasn’t expectin’ you around none, how ya been?”

She smiled, and it looked about as mechanical as it always did. “Just fine, thank you. Have you seen Medic?”

“Him? I dunno, uh, checked his weird doctorin’ place maybe? I just got back in from my run.”

“I’ll look there. Thank you. Don’t go too far from the base today, please, I may need to speak with you as well.”

“Oh, uh.” Scout stepped aside as she moved past him, pressing his back to the wall. “Sure, I mean, yeah, wasn’t gonna, that’s cool.”

He was supposed to meet Pyro at a bar and then a hotel in Teufort tonight. Nothing important, just their first stupid anniversary together. Damn it.

Scout chewed on his lip, watching her disappear into the base.

 

* * *

 

Pistol fire blew up the dirt inches from Pyro’s feet and he scrambled backwards, puffing flame ineffectually at the BLU closing in on him. He grabbed for his flare gun and fired it more on instinct than aim, and was rewarded with a pained yelp. Turning, he fled into the safety of a barn; the same barn he had been teleported into a few short weeks ago. He barely had time to pull out his axe before the BLU Scout came tearing into the barn with his bat, swinging. “Heya honey, I’m home!”

There was a shaking metal smack as his bat came down on the raised hilt of Pyro’s axe. Pyro grinned to himself, shoved, pushing Scout back against the wall. He reached up to pull off the mask. “Imagine seeing you here, sexy.” Scout smirked; Pyro leaned in and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “Excited for tonight?”

The smirk faded. “Yeah, that. I mean, yeah I am, except there’s, like, okay for some reason Miss Pauling’s gone an’ showed up an’ she said somethin’ about not leavin’ the base t’night cuz maybe she’s gotta talk to me?”

“What, again? I thought you stopped batting Demo’s bombs.”

“I did, I dunno what she wants now. Maybe it’s about Spy’s plants.”

“What about Spy’s plants?”

“I put a bunch’a poison ivy in with ’em.”

Pyro laughed, faintly; it faded as quick as it came. “But—I mean. You’ll be free by tonight, right?” Scout grimaced. “Scout, come on!”

“I’m gonna do my best, yeah? We ain’t meetin’ ’til late anyway, right, you booked it for like ten.”

“What about the drinks?”

“I’m—jus’, I’m gonna try, okay? When I ever let you down, man?” Scout reached up to wipe away some sweat beading on Pyro’s temple. “I’ll be there. okay?”

Pyro stuck out his tongue. Scout leaned forward and kissed him, and that would have to be enough. When they broke apart, Pyro paused. “Oh—oh hey, I forgot to tell you. I found a place to stable Esther really close by.”

“Shit, ferreal? Do I finally get to meet her?”

“Of course you do, she has to approve of you if we’re gonna get married.”

“Yeah, okay, sure, payin’ dowry to a horse. Sheesh.”

“She’ll only take payment in carrots,” Pyro said, reaching for his mask again. “I was gonna show you in the morning, it’s in walking distance.”

“Well, okay, fine then, I gotta make it now, I gotta see this damn horse’a yours. Fuckin’ you’s the bonus.”

Pyro snorted and pulled his mask back over his face.

 

* * *

 

The match ended 2:2, which meant they were dragged into overtime for like an hour. Scout near about wanted to shoot himself by the end of it, but he’d just respawned a couple minutes ago.

It ended without a winner, and eventually they all got to head back to their bases. Scout wolfed down dinner and took a cursory look around the base for Miss Pauling, just to be able to say he’d tried. Nothing, though. He went back to his room instead, restlessly flicking through stolen issues of  _Young Physique_ , and wished the sun would set already.

The hours ticked painfully by. Eventually Scout decided screw it and pulled himself together—shower, fussing with his hair before giving it up for pointless, putting on and taking off three different shirts because he couldn’t settle on one. And just before he took off, he pocketed his secret weapon; lipstick that he would draw onto Pyro’s lips just before Scout came back the next day, a detail too obvious to be asked about. Of course he’d been out picking up chicks, what did he look like?

Shit, now he was late.

He was fidgeting with it in his pocket as he made for the exit. When something grabbed his arm he nearly jumped out of his skin. “Holy shit, Doc, cool it!”

“Shh! Be quiet. I must speak with you,” Medic said. He had appeared from a dark adjoining hallway, wearing plainclothes; a sweatervest and a white dress shirt. It made him look even older than usual. Scout pulled himself free. “It is vital that I warn you. Listen—”

“I, what? Doc, look, I gotta be somewhere, I’m late already.”

“Scout, this is—”

“ _Seriously_ , man,” he said, “I am gonna be late an’ I can’t freakin’ be late f’this, I’ll be around tomorrow, tell me then.”

He was already backing down the hall as he said it. Whatever Medic called after him was lost as he ran off.

 

* * *

 

It was exactly the night he had wanted it to be. Scout fell asleep tipsy and giddy and sore and very much in love, and woke up almost the same, but with a shadow of a hangover. He barely noticed it, because Pyro was kissing the back of his neck and teasing his knee between Scout’s thighs. So that was an hour of the day already shot. “I think I sleep better when I’m with you,” Pyro said afterward, letting Scout idly trace his finger over one of his burn scars.

“That’s ‘cuz I’m the best, an’ also because anyone rides a damn dick like you do is gonna be freakin’ wiped afterward.”

“It’s good exercise. Works the legs. Anyway I’m a jockey, I gotta keep in practice. You should try it.”

“Yeah, sometime.”

They showered and scrubbed themselves clean, went down and wiped out half the continental breakfast on their own, and left a revoltingly large tip for the housekeepers. And then Pyro was pulling Scout outside, burbling delightedly about his mare, Esther, and how excited he was for Scout to meet her. Scout had never cared much about horses, but Pyro was a little bit infectious. By the time they got to the stable he was about as amped up as he figured he could get about a horse.

The barn was dusty and quiet, and markedly different from all the RED barns. This one had a sense of home in it, and it smelled of alfalfa and saddle polish. Scout had been formulating what the best possible comeback to Pyro’s “I’m a jockey” joke could be when Pyro led him around a corner. “There she is,” he said, five-foot-five of raw enthusiasm. “Esther! Sweetheart, it’s me!”

Pyro dashed forward, but Scout lingered back, blinking. Hanging her head out over the stall door was a huge dapple-gray animal, whickering as Pyro ran up to her. She had a charcoal mane and deep gray eyes, and seemed much larger than any animal had a right to be. Not that he’d seen many horses, though. “You—damn, Py, you  _ride_  that thing?”

Pyro turned, grinning, one cheek still pressed to Esther’s long nose. “Want to see me do it?”

 

* * *

 

The stable had an indoor ring, which Scout had never heard of and thought was pretty smart. It was all earth and sand that kicked up marvelously as Pyro put Esther through her paces: walk, trot, canter, and a brief, intense gallop that Scout might have missed if he’d blinked. “She’s a quarter horse,” Pyro explained when he halted her next to where Scout sat on a fencepost. “They’re sprinters. Not great endurance runners, but nobody beats her out of the gate.”

“Hey, jus’ like me. Knew there hadta be a reason you liked me.”

“Yeah, you remind me of my horse,” Pyro said with a laugh. If Scout was honest with himself he’d never seen Pyro so animated before. He’d known Esther was important, but damn. “You want to ride her?”

Scout stopped short. He glanced from his boyfriend to his boyfriend’s horse, who was nosing the ground absently. “I mean,” he started, “I thought y’said she don’t like nobody but you.”

“Mostly, yeah.”

“Shit. Yeah, okay.”

It took some debating and Scout almost backed out when Esther started stamping the ground when he tried to mount up. In the end what they did was pull Scout up behind Pyro, and he hung on for dear life as Pyro walked and then trotted them in another circle. It was fun, Scout decided, but he preferred using his own legs to get around.

Still, he didn’t say no when Pyro—with a decidedly devilish grin—suggested going out for a ride.

For a horse supposedly no one else could handle, Esther seemed perfectly-behaved to Scout. She took them easy through a little trail that wound out from behind the stable, and after a while Pyro had both of them dismount and led her along by the bridle for a time. “She doesn’t carry two people very often,” he explained. “We’re both pretty light so it isn’t too bad, but, y’know, she’s my racehorse. Can’t risk her.”

“Sure. You ever ridden out here before? It’s like a freakin’ forest.”

“For the Badlands it is, yeah. Want to stop?”

Scout did want to stop. Pyro tied the horse to a tree, and let Scout pull him down to the grass to be kissed all over.

Perhaps an hour passed, during which Esther neatly clipped most of the grass in her reach down to the roots. Pyro had just swung himself up into the saddle for them to head back when Scout said, “You hear that?”

“What?”

“Sounds like … I dunno, grass rustlin’?”

“A rabbit, maybe?” Pyro said, and when he turned to look he froze. From where he was standing beside the horse Scout couldn’t see what had stilled him; he ducked under Esther’s neck. A peculiar feeling, a sensation not unlike his stomach uprooting itself, surged through him.

Miss Pauling had just stepped through the bushes. “Hello, Scout. Hello, Pyro,” she said, with a decidedly unhappy lilt to her voice.

Scout could think of nothing to say. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Pyro’s hands tighten around the reins. “Miss Pauling,” Pyro said, not quite through grit teeth. “I’m not sure what you’re doing here.”

She laughed faintly. It sounded tired. “I think you do. This would have been a lot easier if you had just stayed at the base, Scout.”

“Wh—what. What woulda been easier.”

“Feeding both of you back into respawn so we could load your old spawn backups,” she said, rubbing one eye with the heel of her hand. Scout noticed for the first time that there was a pistol in her other one. “Now it’s a mess. I guess you aren’t running off after all, Medic didn’t get to you in the end. I was hasty.”

Silence. The horse shifted her weight.

Miss Pauling straightened up, still looking tired. “All right. You know why I’m here, this—the two of you—it’s in flagrant disregard of your contracts. I’ve interviewed both your teammates and I think finding you here together is pretty conclusive evidence. Get off the horse, please, Pyro.”

Pyro did not get off the horse. “You’re going to wipe our memories?”

“Yes, more or less. Direct orders. Not as messy as the thing that happened with Soldier and Demo.”

“Miss Pauling, c’mon, no, please,” Scout started up, and once he started he couldn’t stop. His head was spinning, he was going to be sick. “We just—y, you can’t jus’ up an’ do that, c’mon, we’re … we’ll go away, we’ll go away anywhere, ain’t nobody gonna hear about TFI from us. We—”

“It’s not my call, Scout,” Miss Pauling sighed, and leveled the gun at them. “Either you forget about each other, or I kill you right here.”

“What about the option where you pretend you never saw anything?” Pyro asked quietly.

“Then I probably get strung up and put in a shallow grave by whoever’s hired to replace me,” Miss Pauling snapped. “I’m not doing this to be cruel, I’m doing it because those are my orders. Get off the horse, Pyro, I don’t want to have to shoot it too.”

Pyro actually, genuinely  _snarled._  “You wouldn’t fucking  _dare_.”

Pauling said something else, but Scout didn’t quite hear it. He’d started fidgeting his hands in his pockets as soon as Pauling appeared, and it had taken him until now to realize he’d been fussing with the tube of lipstick still in his pocket from the night before. He pulled it out to look at it: a simple black metal thing, a squared-off tube. The edges were sharp.

He wasn’t really thinking about what he was doing when he whipped back his arm and threw it straight at Pauling’s hands.

He heard a startled, pained yelp, he saw the gun go flying. At his side Esther had reared up in a panic, whinnying high and loud, and Scout only just managed to get clear of her hooves before she came back down. His head was thundering, his mouth had gone dry, and he was staring like an idiot at Pauling fumbling to find the gun, unsure if attacking her would fix anything.

“ _Scout!_ ”

His head snapped up to see Pyro reaching out to him, white-faced. At last, he thought, something that made sense.

He reached up, grabbing Pyro’s wrist, and scrambled up into the saddle behind him. He wrapped his arms around Pyro’s chest for dear life as Pyro kicked the horse, and then they were off like a streak of lightning blazing over the thinning grass. “Where are we goin’?!” he yelled over the deafening sound of hooves, only to be answered with  _I don’t know!_  A sharp pain filled his mouth. He’d bitten his tongue.

A gunshot rang out in the air, and six feet away from them the grass jumped up. Looking over his shoulder Scout saw Miss Pauling scrambling after them, gun again in hand and falling far behind with every heartbeat. Two more shots followed, both even further off-target than the first, and then suddenly she was just a tiny blur lost in the trees.

Scout found himself laughing, almost hysterically. Another few minutes and they were out of familiar territory entirely, Teufort just a blot behind them. His mouth tasted like pennies. “We quit,” he said to no one in particular as Pyro let the horse slow to a brisk walk, and then, cupping a hand to his mouth and shouting, “Ya hear that?  _We quit!_ ”

In front of him he could hear Pyro’s own disbelieving laughter, and when he leaned forward and kissed him hard on the cheek Pyro twisted his face to return it. “Where we goin’?” he asked again, cheeks flush.

“The nearest train station,” Pyro said, breathless. “We’re going to rob those goddamn trains!”

 

* * *

 

_And I am coming home to you_  
_With my own blood in my mouth_  
_And I am coming home to you_  
_[If it’s the last thing that I do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQnciEDYoo0)_

_**THE END** _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> For the interested, a few pieces of fanart and a bit of meta discussion can be found on [my NEVER DIE NEVER DIE tag on tumblr.](http://theoldaeroplane.com/tagged/never+die+never+die/chrono/)


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